Some random thoughts

Tonight’s blog entry is a bit of an experiment. Instead of writing the whole thing at once, I am just going to leave this window open and type in whatever thoughts happen to pop into my head as I do my usual Internet stuff.

Dunno if it will work, and it may be tricky to come up with 1000 words of random thoughts. There might end up being filler.

But what the heck, you have to try new things or your soul gets stale.

And as of this sentence, I have already done one hundred words. So, you know, rock on.

How come there has never been a creamy orange flavoured pop? All I get from Google is a link to a brewery website (???) and a “product not found” message. I suppose a brewery could also make soda. It works for Jones Soda… use the same machines the brewers use to fill the same type of mass produced bottle.

Anyhow, I think a creamy orange soda is a great idea. For those of you who have never had a creamsicle (or dreamsicle as they are called in some markets), it might seem counterintuitive, but trust me, the combination is phenomenal.

Call me, Jones!


When you are learning French, it is really easy to get in over your head. You can totally convince yourself that you are awesome at French because you can have such marvelous and free-flowing conversations with yourself in your head. And hey, they say that the ultimate sign of mastering a language is when you start thinking in it. So you must be Flashmaster French by now.

Wrong! See, speaking French in your head only calls on the vocabulary and grammar you already have. Actual conversation with a francophone has no such restrictions. Plus, like English speakers, francophones don’t always pronounce every letter of every word. That’s not a problem for a native listener who acquired the language naturally, their minds fill in the rest automatically. But for us second language types, it can render a sentence where you know every word into gibberish.

So basically, it is way easier to speak French than it is to understand it when you hear it.


This song is amusing. It’s about driving in Boston, but I am pretty sure all major urban centers have the same issues.

The problem, when you really boil it down, is that there is no mechanism (nor could there be, realistically) to stop people from developing and moving into land because the traffic system can’t support them.

And if you have growth without rational limitations like that, you get overcrowding. And once it is that bad, there’s not a damned thing you can do about it. You can’t force people to move somewhere else. You can’t build any more capacity because all the land around the existing highways is occupied. And you can build all the mass transit you want. People with money still will not use it, at least here in car-crazy North America.

And good luck trying to convince people to give up the nine to five work schedule. That is the whole reason there is ap roblem in the first place. You have long stretches of highway that are empty from 9 to 5 because they were built specifically to handle the huge traffic spikes that naturally occurs when everyone is driving to and from work at the same time.

In an ideal world, it would be possible to give the urban planning authorities the rights and the power to refuse to grant development licences for places that already have the maximum population that the system can handle.

But try getting that through Parliament. You will have people Godwin-ing all over you in no time.

People hate being told they can’t do what they want to do, no matter how much sense it makes.


Hmmm. So far, the biggest issue with this little experiment of mine is that I am used to writing as a sort of marathon effort, or maybe a mid-distance race. I just keep going until it is done. I have always done far better with concentrated, uninterrupted periods of effort than with anything more intermittent.

That’s part of why I test so well. An exam is exactly the kind of long hard run at which I excel.

But this experiment of mine is supposed to be intermittent. I just type in whatever is on my mind when it strikes me. Otherwise, business as usual. And I am finding that REALLY hard.

I;m built for drag racing, not stop and go traffic!

Also, of course, because I have this drive to cross that finish line ASAP, I have caught myself trying to think of something more to say, and that defeats the whole purpose of the experiment.

The idea was to collect some of my random thoughts, the sort of thing that happens in my head all the time. Hopefully, that will lead to a less noisy head. Or at the very least, a collection of pithy aphorisms and trenchant observations.

Guess that s going to be hard than I thought.


I have tried out my new sex toy, whom I now call Purple Pete. Without lube, it has not gone any better than you would expect, but I ordered me some Astroglide (voted Lube That Sounds Most Like A Transformer every year) so that problem will end.

My online friends recommended other lubes to me, like Probe (how sci fi!) and Liquid Silk (ooh my my). But weirdly, Amazon.ca only carries insanely huge Costco sized bottles of the both of them that cost $50, and I don’t have that kind of money.

Besides, buying that much lube is a heck of a commitment. I want to make sure my relationship with Pete is on solid ground before I dive in like that.

Pete has a problem that is already straining out relationship, though. The plain truth is that he stinks. He gives off this powerful plasticky rubbery smell that I find quite nauseating.

Granted, when in use, Stinky Pete and I are not exactly face to face. But the smell when he is not in use kind of makes it hard not to associate him with nausea.

Right now, I have relegated him to a far corner of the bed.

We will see what develops when I have lube.

He might just be worth it.


Well, I guess that went okay. I will likely try it again some time. I still felt the need to power through it and that might not be negotiable. Maybe I would be better off putting my momentary thoughts in a text file.

See you tomorrow, folks!

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